Douglass and lincolns past voices essay

Tragically, Lincoln himself did not live to see the Amendment ratified into law, though he surely knew its acceptance was inevitable. Douglas from to He had only one political test: The Civil War was still raging, claiming countless casualties on both sides, almost every day.

I was present and heard it. Cox and other Northern Democrats during the Civil War, nevertheless tended, like Cox in the postwar period, to come to terms with the heroic image of Lincoln. They found themselves losing ground, even in their own section, being regarded more and more as a cranky remnant of the past.

Lincoln did not try to impress. Lincoln suspend his practice of receiving visitors at the State Capitol, Mr. In addition, the elimination of slavery was a reason for the war and the incredible carnage that was holy as preserving modern democracy.

Moreover, the logical deduction from this premise was that the interests of freedom should continue to predominate in the country, slavery's continued existence notwithstanding.

Consequently, northern delegates hostile to slavery, such as Gouverneur Morris, ultimately had to sacrifice their antislavery convictions in order to create the Union.

Writing about his leadership on slavery issues, Mr. On January 1,the Emancipation Proclamation gave hope for freedom to the three to four million slaves still under Confederate control. We still harden our hearts and refuse to let the people go. At that time, the most powerful member of the House of Representatives was the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, a post which Stevens held.

Yet the precepts of an antislavery nationalism played probably the most critical role in driving the votes of conservative northerners to Lincoln rather than Douglas. I know that Lincoln entertained the same view of him. Guelzo, "Apple of Gold in a Picture of Silver: Unlike some northern Whigs, who stressed the emancipatory tendencies of a free labor political economy, Lincoln considered the individual conscience to be the engine of emancipation.

Crittenden who struggled so valiantly to hold the Union together.

By their lights, secession desecrated the democratic process and shattered the Union in order to promote a social system that repudiated the nation's core principles.

Consequently, southerners clung fiercely to their political and economic interests in slavery and pronounced slavery to be an exemplary method of social organization. The uncompromising stand by Douglas, the independent man of the new Northwest, against James Buchanan, the old man of Pennsylvania and supporter of the slave South, could prove disastrous for Douglas and his party in Illinois.

Conkling and the other old friends in Springfield. Senator and Secretary of War before Secession. Noble as was the notion of this expanded cause, Lincoln well knew how difficult it would be to re-define the goals of a great war in mid-fight.

These included, in early James Oakes, The Radical and The Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics, p.

David Zarefsky, “Public Sentiment is Everything”: Lincoln’s View of Political Persuasion, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Summerpp. agronumericus.com, Create Lesson Plans from Movies and Film Clips, Abraham Lincoln, Spielberg. Thus the anti-Lincoln tradition persists in lonely splendor, and the study of that tradition does tell us something, though far from everything, about Lincoln's unique hold upon the memory and imagination of his countrymen.

In a word, he matters.

An online exhibit of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, handwritten by Abraham Lincoln, with comments by his Secretary of State, William Seward, from the collections of the New York State Library. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America Allen C.

Guelzo (New York: Simon and Schuster, ) There was a time when every schoolboy learned that Abraham Lincoln was the “Great Emancipator” who freed the slaves. Lincoln refined his nationalist ideology in response to Douglas's September essay in Harper's Magazine.

Seeking to justify the policy of popular sovereignty, Douglas contended that the founders had enshrined the principle of local self-government in the Constitution and early territorial law.